SoMa Literary Review

Bite Me

By R. G. Larsen

“Dio, I’m hungry,” complained Chico. “Can’t we spend a few of those coins in the can for food?”

“Shut up, Chico, “These are talents, according to Jedediah, given to invest and multiply. You don’t use them now. You put them where they will make more, where they will make so much that we don’t have to listen to our stinking’ bellies no more, so shut the fuck up.”

Chico and Franklin like many others came to the city by ones and twos from as far away as Brazil and from as close as Turlock. They sought work and opportunity but found unemployment and desperation. The city sheltered them with its alleys, abandoned buildings, and architectural crannies. They were homeless people who worked the periphery of San Francisco or crept through its alleys between dusk and dawn. While others slept they gathered what they could from what was thrown out or left about. When the sun came up, they slept openly on benches or on park grass. When the weather turned bad or the police nosed about, they hid, huddled, and waited.

Their transformation from urban blight to urban terror came as the result of two factors, the street prophet, Jedediah, and Katie Earl Cosby, a young, snotty secretary who worked on Montgomery Street. Katie had gone out for an after-work jog in her usual skimpy sports outfit when Franklin and Chico approached her. Chico held a sign that said “Out Work Viet Nam Vet” while Franklin held a coffee can which he had seeded with coins. Chico was born after the war in Viet Nam ended. More volatile Franklin didn’t like it when she said, “Buzz off, asshole.” Franklin was a parolee the way others are reformed smokers. Violence still beckoned to him the way wafting smoke drove the reformed nearly insane.

“Watch your mouth, woman. We only need a few quarters. You can spare that.” Had not Jedediah preached to them just last night? He has said, “The path was straight before them, and the way was clear.” They had only to ask and the Lord would provide. This city of heathens was already convicted and would be sentenced by a just God. Their decaying flesh would rot in Embarcadero Plaza. “God will consume them in their wickedness,” Jedediah had said, “and you are God’s agents on earth. Their excesses are sin unto The Almighty.”

Chico didn’t think Katie Earl had much excess. Her tight shorts showed nice buttocks and well formed thighs. “Please,” said Chico, “we are really hungry. We haven’t eaten for a couple of days.”

“Bite me,” said Katie Earl.

“What did that bitch say?” Franklin asked.

“She said, Bite me,” replied Chico.

Franklin grabbed Katie Earl’s middle finger, which she had just displayed, and bent it over backwards. She cried out in pain. She screamed louder when Chico sunk his teeth into her shapely thigh and tore out a mouthful of flesh. Franklin slugged her. They quickly loaded her body into Chico’s shopping cart and covered her with a dirty blanket. Their favorite spot under the freeway was only a few blocks away. Franklin hung her inside an abandoned shipping crate. Had the weather not turned ugly or had they eaten recently, it may all have ended differently. Instead, they gutted her and roasted her over an oil can fire on metal fence stakes.

Jedediah praised them and urged other encampments to visit and to partake in the feast. “You will help end world hunger and stop over-population at the same time. You are removing a wasteful carbon producing organism and helping fight global warming,” he preached. This made perfect sense to Franklin. Chico was full and didn’t care much anyway.

All night long Jedediah gave his blessing to those who ate and offered them communion by serving Gallo red table wine, urging them to go forth and cleanse the city of its heathen. Life had been progressively harder for the homeless; hunger, disease, and poor diet were claiming more victims daily. The redistribution of wealth begun in the Reagan era and continued through the Bush administrations, father and son, had done little to ease the pain of the poor or provide jobs. The ranks of the homeless swelled daily from those lower class peoples who were pushed out of their homes by refugees from the middle class. Food and fuel for heating became precious commodities for the working class. People in general became more restive. They became less tolerant. Attitudes polarized and religious leaders of all types were quick to launch Armageddon diatribes.

Some who listened and sought revelations heard Jedediah’s message. The savory Katie Earl became the standard by which all others were judged. The practice caught on; the result was predictable. Fear gripped the city as five then fifteen then twenty young female corpses were found partially eaten, cooked over fires peopled by the homeless. Vigilante groups were formed and swept through encampments killing anyone they found. Chico and Franklin lit out for the rugged area near Fort Point and Sutro Forest. Newspaper headlines declared: CANNIBALS ROAM CITY’S STREETS.

The homeless fled to police stations and churches for refuge. The mayor had clerks issue I.D. cards with photos that became passports to life for many. The Armory and other city structures were opened and policed. No one walked alone. At night they talked and mixed as they had seldom done before. They began calling themselves by the areas where they sought refuge. There were SoMas for the South-of-Market, Sutros, Tenderloins, and Castros. There were Marinas, Missions, Portreros, and a host of others. The cannibalism continued until alliances between groups began to result in the giving up of perpetrators. A few were securely tied and delivered to local police stations. Jedediah was found hanged on a makeshift gallows in Golden Gate Park.

“Franklin, I got to get back to the city. I didn’t leave Mexico to freeze up here. I can’t stand it no more, Franklin,” Chico stated after a cold and foggy evening and worse morning.

“It’s too dangerous; they going to get you, Chico,” replied Franklin. “It’s a trick what you read in the papers. Vigilantes waiting, make an example of you.

“I am goin’ anyway. Besides, I didn’t kill nobody.”

“And you don’t know who killed her. That’s what you mean to say.” Franklin glared at him until Chico looked away.

“That’s true. I don’t know who did that cuz I wasn’t there,” Chico said. He waited until Franklin fell asleep on his bed of Cypress needles before he slipped away through the fog. In less than two hours he had made his way to Geary Street and O’Farrell. Later he checked into the Tenderloin Refuge, applied for and got a Tenderloin I. D. tag, and had his first real meal in a month.

A Priest at the refuge was even more helpful the next week when he provided him with clothes and sent him on a job interview. The next day, he began his first employment in years at a newly opened McDonald’s hamburger shop. He saw likenesses of Franklin on posters stapled to telephone poles as he walked to and from work. That was about as far as he cared to stray after what had happened. The next week was clear and sunny when vigilantes swept Sutro Forest and ended Franklin’s troubled career.

Chico lived and worked in relative happiness for the first time in his life. The city settled down to a normal cadence. Once more people began walking the streets, jogging, and traveling at night. In fact, all went well until a new manager was hired, a woman named Martha. It was almost one year to the day from Franklin’s demise when she upbraided him severely and threatened to dismiss him if his work didn’t improve.

“I doing the best I can, Boss,” he pleaded.

“That simply isn’t good enough,” she said.

“Maybe you think you stand back here and cook hamburgers all day and do better than I do,” he said.

“Bite me,” she replied.

The restaurant seemed to do as good or better under the supervision of the assistant manager than it did under Martha over the next six weeks. Customers commented on the tastiness of the burgers. Chico cleaned his meat grinder often and occasionally dropped a quart Seven Up bottle down his commercial grade disposal so the ground glass would clear away any residue of bone and blood. Martha had been very tasty with the special sauce and toasted bun.

Also by R. G. Larsen on SoMa Literary Review:

A Serious Buyer, Ceiling Spiders, Final Procedure, The Observer & Macklin & Marci

R. G. Larsen was born in San Francisco. He received his BA at S.F. State and MA at U.S.F. He started writing fiction about five years ago, and now lives in Santa Rosa.